[JohnHolland]

Hi All,

I'm new here at this forum, so maybe the answer on my question is already here on this forum.

I have a computer with OS WIN98SE and a HDD of 6GB as primary partition. My MoBo is NOT
supporting 48bit LBA and supports only HDD <33GB.
I now have installed a 500GB PATA HDD and connected it to a UltraPCI card. Sofar everything
seems OK and my computer recognozes the full 500GB.

I want to partition and format my new disk with the FDISK and FORMAT that came with WIN98SE,
but I am not sure wether these programs support 48bit LBA. As far as I understand these programs
will work on a 48bit LBA disk but do not the display the sizes correctly. Will they partition and format
my disk properly, so my data will not be damaged beyond the 137GB barrier?

I also have a copy of PowerQuest PartitionMagic v8 installed on my computer. Do you know if
PartitionMagic will support 48bit LBA.

I am aware that the Programs SCANDISK and DEFRAG will not support 48bit LBA, so I have disabled
them.

Thanks for your help!

[LoneCrusader]

Welcome to MSFN

Have a look at dencorso's thread on large hard drives.

[JohnHolland]

Hi LoneCrusader,

Thank you for your welcome and also for your hint
to read the thread of Dencorso.
I will read his thread and also the threads which are
reffered to in his thread and hope to find what I am
looking for.

Thanks again.

John

[LoneCrusader]

No problem. Good luck!

[Fredledingue]

The limit for DOS fdisk is 1 or 2 Tb.

[Fredledingue]

I'm not sure about the limitations of these softwares but I remember that for their DOS versions, they are pretty high.
You should ask MDGx about that. He knows better than me.

[dencorso]

wsxedcrfv, on 17 February 2010 - 08:19 AM, said:

Fredledingue, on 16 February 2010 - 06:54 PM, said:

The limit for DOS fdisk is 1 or 2 Tb.

So it's been absolutely proven that fdisk.exe (5/18/2000) can correctly partition hard drives of at least 1 Tb in size, regardless of the partition configuration chosen by the user?

And after partitioning a 1 Tb drive with fdisk, what comes next to actually format the drive? Was format.com (4/23/1999) or (11/7/2006) used to complete the test?

No, it has not been absolutely proven that the limit is above 512 GiB. In fact, it seems to be under 1 TiB. You should peruse the threads ponted to in my > 137 GB thread linked to the right of my signature to see what is currently known (especially the thread (g), by Marius '95). The Ranish Partition Manager, however, can both partition and format a 1 TiB HDD.

[sp193]

But the normal Microsoft FDISK (That can display disk sizes > 64GB properly) cannot display the sizes of my 200GB Hitachi HDD properly (The values "warp" around during partition creation, but a large partition that was already created has it's capacity properly displayed).

Plus when there is space left (But above the "warped" value it has), it will keep saying "There is no space left on the disk". This is true even if you use percentage to create a partition.

[dencorso]

See: KB280737.
Then, forget format and fdisk, and use instead The Ranish Partition Manager.

[MDGx]

You might find the answers you're looking for here:
http://www.msfn.org/...pic=125836&st=1
That post points to other 2 MSFN threads, which are:
http://www.msfn.org/...ic=113142&st=36
and respectively:
http://www.msfn.org/...ic=113142&st=41


HTH

[Fredledingue]

sp193:
This is a minor cosmetic bug and can be ignored.

[dencorso]

About FORMAT:

Marius 95, on 22 January 2008 - 08:23 AM, said:

I just created a RAID 0 logical drive using HPT372 and 2 WD5000AAJB. I have 1TB of free space and no way to format it!
I just created a FAT32 partition with Ranish Partition Manager, saved it and rebooted. I was planning to format it form Windows, (Rightclick-Format...) but there is a problem. Windows tries to format it as a 98GB partition. FORMAT.COM - same problem. I could format it with Ranish Partition Manager, but it creates 16KB clusters. 16KB clusters on a 1TB partition means a VERY big FAT.
[...]

Marius 95, on 22 January 2008 - 02:06 PM, said:

Fixed FORMAT.COM
FreeDOS FORMAT.EXE
[...]

Marius 95, on 25 April 2008 - 01:53 AM, said:

[...]
About my 1TB partition and Win98:
- Format - impossible in DOS/Win98
[...]

About FDISK:

dencorso, on 29 November 2008 - 12:51 AM, said:

[...]
read Q263044, Petr's thread on Format and Fdisk, and Q280737, in this order.
[...]

I think that's all the relevant info existing throughout MSFN. If you need/want a more precise answer, you should get Maximus-Decim's BHDD31.ZIP (a. k. a. BHDD31e, direct download) and perform the testing yourself (and report it here), just like I did for SCANDSKW and NDD32, and Marius '95 did for SCANDISK and NDD (DOS version).
Sorry I cannot be of more help!

[submix8c]

?Have you tried gParted Live?

[jaclaz]

submix8c, on 21 February 2010 - 06:58 PM, said:

?Have you tried gParted Live?

Nice game, can I play too?

?Have you tried Partition Logic?
?Have you tried PartedMagic?

jaclaz 2 - submix8c 1



jaclaz

[dencorso]

wsxedcrfv, on 22 February 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

> Fixed FORMAT.COM
> FreeDOS FORMAT.EXE

Not sure what that means. If they've been fixed, then why the sad face?

The sad faces mean [Petr's] fixed versions of these programs didn't work for Marius '95, too.

wsxedcrfv, on 22 February 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

> Petr's thread on Format and Fdisk

That link is not working for me

Sorry! I fixed it now, so it now must be working.

And, yes, all Marius '95 were performed with his raid 0, because 1TB drives were not available or were too expensive, I'm not positive which, at that point in time. Yet, I don't see why this should be invalid, as the raid 0 is created at BIOS level, and should be transparent to DOS. In any case, the above is all the info I'm aware of. I cannot provide you the info you ask, because AFAIK, nobody reported what you seek. As I said before, from this point on, experimenting is in order.
BTW, BHDD31 includes Petr's corrected files, hence the 2006 dates. I've given up format and fdisk a long time ago. I use instead The Ranish Partition Manager (on DOS or Win 98SE), Gdisk (on DOS or Win32) and, to set custom sectors per cluster values, Ridgecrop's fat32format (on Win XP).

[rloew]

wsxedcrfv, on 22 February 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

This is the May/2000 version of fdisk that I'm sure we all use (when we use fdisk that is). What's strange is that Microsoft says this:

"This hotfix is not designed for 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) hard disks, and it is not supported on hard disks larger than 137 GB."

Why do they claim some sort of incompatibility with 48-bit LBA? We know that it seems to work on drives between 128 to 512 gb, why would Microsoft think fdisk has a problem in that range?

Well isin't that in interesting. Microsoft claims that fdisk can't partition drives larger than 512 gb. That behavior is "by design". Didn't they tell us earlier that Fdisk is not supported on drives larger than 128 gb? They also told us a long time ago that DOS scandisk won't work on drives larger than 128 gb (which it can). Why can't they come clean on the upper bounds of these programs the first time?

Microsoft goes on to say this in the Resolution section: "You can use the Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Setup boot disk that is provided with the full version of Windows Me to partition new drives before you install Windows."

So does this mean that Win-ME came with different versions of fdisk and format (or something else ?) that *WILL* work on drives larger than 512 gb? If not, then what exactly is Microsoft trying to say?

Neither FDISK, FORMAT nor SCANDISK know or care about 48-Bit LBA. Older BIOSes and unpatched Windows 9X do not support 48-Bit LBA.
I believe Microsoft set the limit to 128GB so that people wouldn't get a false sense of security by thinking that they could use a 512GB Hard Drive solely by using FDISK.

Quote

I wish that someone would modify format.com and remove the limitations of the /z switch.

I wrote my own version of FORMAT that allows all parameters to be set and supports 2TB Partitions.